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Violence under the spotlight: A multifaceted phenomenon

June 12, 2024 Jive Media Africa

Researchers, community workers and experts from South Africa and India brought their collective wisdom together for a webinar on 12 June to dissect the root causes of violence against women and girls in marginalised communities – urban informal settlements and rural communities – globally and to lay the groundwork for identifying what appropriate interventions to tackle it could be.

The webinar, the third in the Siyaphambili Youth Project webinar series, titled "Exploring and Resisting the Impact of Marginalisation on Young People's Health and Wellbeing", drew on case studies from KwaZulu-Natal Province (KZN) in South Africa and Mumbai city in India to gain insight into the complex issues surrounding violence and marginalisation.

As noted by webinar facilitator Dr Andrew Gibbs, Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter in the UK, marginalised communities worldwide face high levels of violence, driven by historical, social, economic and political exclusion. 

In South Africa, these challenges are especially pronounced, with informal settlements housing a significant portion of the population. 

Men: What are they thinking?

Citing statistics from United Nations Habitat project, Sivuyile Khaula, Operations Manager at South African non-governmental organisation Project Empower, which focuses on prevention of HIV and violence against women, said approximately one billion people live in informal settlements globally, with eThekwini Municipality housing 25% of its own population in approximately 500 informal settlements.

In his presentation, Khaula highlighted the structural factors contributing to violence perpetrated by men in those settlements, including poor mental health, food insecurity, substance abuse, and the historical backdrop of violence in KZN.

A small study in 2020 involving 80 young men (18-30 years of age) in eThekwini Municipality revealed the multiplicity of challenges they faced: 34% reported depression, 28% anxiety, 49% food insecurity, 31% harmful problematic alcohol use in the past 6 months, and 42% drug use in the past 6 months. Furthermore, 37% reported to perpetrating intimate partner violence (IPV) in the past six months, and 47% reported engaging in violence towards other men in the previous six months.

Khaula outlined the specifics of Siyaphambili Youth Project’s “co-development process” which was centred on working with young people to understand their own perceptions of the causes of violence and to co-develop interventions aimed at reducing IPV and HIV risk, and improving mental health, and which addressed their specific needs. 

“The men said they wanted an intervention focused on livelihoods, mental health, improving relationships with girlfriends, communication (particularly positive communication) and importance of friends as a common source of support,” said Khaula.

In understanding the multiple factors driving men’s perpetration of violence Khaula identified a range of issues raised by men. Many indicated a personal history of experiencing violence, ranging from experience of abuse or being physically disciplined as a child or witnessing interpersonal violence between parents and elders. 

Other causes of violence perpetration offered by the young men related to uncertainty in romantic relationships: men often felt jealous or insecure about not being able to provide materially for their partners. Some men reported that their friends encouraged them to “discipline” their girlfriend if they saw her talking to another man, as well as to have multiple partners. While men recognised that drugs and alcohol were often linked to their perpetration of violence, they also highlighted that they used drugs and alcohol as a way to reduce the stress they faced in their daily lives. 

In many instances, it was apparent that young men saw violence as an effective and legitimate tool for disciplining and controlling a girlfriend who resisted their “masculine authority”.

Khaula said it was important to situate the high rates of men’s perpetration of violence against a historical backdrop: during the 1980s and 1990s, KZN had been the site of widespread political violence and civil war leading to significant social upheaval. During the decade that followed, large numbers of young people lost parents to the HIV/Aids epidemic and, as a result, endured high levels of emotional upheaval, physical displacement as well as a sense of loss and abandonment. 

He said while the co-development process provided some new insights into causes, what was equally important was the fact that the young men themselves were involved in identifying “spaces for change” in their lives and those of their peers. 

Social support: Rural vs urban

In the second case study, Dr Nwabisa Jama Shai, a Specialist Researcher in the Gender and Health Research Unit at the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) explored how social contexts shaped the risk of IPV, HIV acquisition, and substance misuse among young people in both urban informal settlements in eThekwini, and rural communities in northern KZN. 

Her qualitative study involved 17 young people from these settings aged 18-29 and showed that interpersonal violence, especially by men against other men and female partners, was prevalent in both urban and rural areas. Urban settings, however, reported higher levels of criminally-linked violent activity.

Shai said many young men expressed a symbolic rejection of violence against women, despite some peers justifying it as an expression of manhood.

The study found that both men and women engaged in multiple partnering, although motivations varied. The study also highlighted the fact that alcohol and drug use were closely linked to violence.

Shai pointed to stark differences in support systems between urban and rural settings. Rural young people reported stronger community support, especially during crises, while urban youth often faced a trust deficit due to high crime levels.

As part of its conclusions, the study confirmed that young people's social contexts are marked by high levels of interpersonal violence, especially for men and more so in urban settings. However, there was a lack of understanding of the phenomenon of women’s violence against other women and the influence of multiple partnering which seemed to be shaping women’s own risk-taking behaviour. 

Shai said the psychosocial effects of lockdown on livelihoods also deserved further exploration.

While young people reported enjoying some social support from their communities, particularly in rural settings, such support may be inadequate for young men in urban contexts in particular, she said. 

Violence and mental health

Shifting the focus to India, Nayreen Daruwalla, director of research, partnerships and scaling at SNEHA (the Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action) discussed violence against women in Mumbai's slums. The work of SNEHA, a leading health-focused NGO in India dedicated to empowering women and their families, includes strategies for primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention of violence in urban informal settlements.

Emphasising the clear intersection of violence and women’s mental health, Daruwalla shared data from SNEHA's counselling centres that revealed that 40% of registered survivors showed signs of moderate depression, with 7% experiencing severe depression. 

Anxiety levels were similarly high, she said, with 29% suffering moderate anxiety and 4% severe. Daruwalla underscored that prolonged abuse can lead to significant mental health issues, necessitating a multifaceted approach to prevention.

SNEHA's programme includes crisis and extended response counselling, community mobilisation, institutional responses involving police/legal services and healthcare, and advocacy. These efforts aim to improve mobility, individual identity, and overall wellbeing of women in these communities, she said.

Daruwalla said a multifaceted, intersectional, psychosocial approach to preventing violence against women and girls was needed. Such an approach should acknowledge the impact of sociopolitical and cultural contexts, and encompass primary, secondary and tertiary prevention interventions across all levels, she said. 

‘Different settings, similar challenges’

Reflecting on the presentations and case study findings, Professor Rachel Jewkes, Executive Scientist at the South African Medical Research Council, said it was interesting to have an opportunity to compare and contrast “snapshots of life” from different settings which had similar challenges. 

She outlined what she described as a “dynamic relationship” between structural and individual/relationship factors driving IPV. 

While poverty was a key driver of violence in all settings, central among the structural factors was gender inequality. “The essential elements of patriarchal privilege and disempowerment of women are common,” she said.

On the phenomenon of women fighting with women highlighted by Shai’s presentation, Jewkes said while violence was normative in so many aspects of social relations such data suggested that violence was not always gendered, although there were obvious cases in which it was. 

Khaula’s data about mens’ childhood traumas reflected an “intergenerational cycling of violence”, said Jewkes, which obviously has “a huge impact on the psyche, and the mental health of boys as they grow up into adults and then perform their adult lives”. 

Jewkes suggested that poor mental health “cuts across all conversations”. 

“Not only does the experience of violence severely and negatively impact mental health and in itself can be a driver of substance abuse, but if people have poor mental health, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, they are much more likely, particularly men, to perpetrate violence and I think we've seen that played out in the discussions today.” 

According to Jewkes, it was important to note that the data showed that even within very impoverished settings there were households in which there was no IPV. 

“It’s very important to be able to start thinking … what might differentiate those homes from other homes,” she said, suggesting that building positive communication strategies and healthy relationship conflict responses were “amenable factors” for interventions in addition to strengthening mental health, reducing substance abuse and changing views on gender equality and the position of women. 

Concluding the proceedings, Gibbs said the next Siyaphambili Youth Webinar would entail a shift in focus away from identifying and understanding the problems facing young people to exploring effective interventions and solutions.